Satire IV

Satire 4 is a rewriting of the Satire 1 but in a much darker tone. It was written some few years later but it is also dealing with the unstable and full of rumour political climate of the Elizabethan court. It is also the longest and the most complex of the Donne’s Satires. With its complicated narrative and diverse strands of imagery the Satire is framed as a traditional meditatio mortis. Donne begins invoking death:

Well; I may now receive, and die; my sin

Indeed is great, but I have been in

A purgatory, such as feared hell is

A recreation, and scant map of this.

The satirist confesses that he committed a sin of going to ‘purgatory’ – to Court. The Satire serves as the last confession, preparing him to the Extreme Unction, wiping away all his sins and bringing him closer to salvation. It reveals the cathartic power of poetry, the last resort of cleaning one’s conscience. The Court is represented as purgatory, the place in between, where people come and go, either to hell or heaven. Significantly, the satirist compares the Court to the purgatory and not to hell, although later in the poem Donne poses a rhetorical question: ‘why is it hung with the seven deadly sins?’ It indicates that the poet does believe in the possibility of redemption for those at Court, like himself. In the Satire Donne takes the reader on a Dantesque tour of the purgatory. He paints it as more gruesome and fear imposing than the image of hell described by Dante. The ‘feared hell’ is just a ‘scant map’, a ‘recreation’ compare to the Court. At home the satirist recollects the scenes he witnessed at Court:

(…) in wholesome solitariness

My precious soul began, the wretchedness

Of suitors at Court to mourn, and a trance

Like his, who dreamed he saw hell, did advance

Itself on me, such men as he saw there,

I saw at Court, and worse, and more.

The circular mode of the Satire brings the satirist back to his chamber at the end of the poem. There, he wishes to ‘drown the sins of this place’ and ‘wash the stains away.’ In doing so Donne criticizes the negative freedom of doing as one pleases and endorses an ideal of positive freedom. He challenges his world by withdrawing from its social structures. He speaks out against the corruption and legal oppression of Court.

The satirist washes away his sins of entering Court by confessing them through the medium of the poem:

To wash the stains away; though I yet

With Maccabee’s modesty, the known merit

Of my work lessen: yet some wise man shall,

I hope, esteem my writs canonical.

The Satire, thus, is a canonical purgation, absolution received from the ‘wise man,’ the reader of the poem. Similarly to the beginning of the poem, through the finishing lines Donne seeks to receive, and to escape the purgatory of the known world.The "wise man" is someone like Donne who can be in the world but not of the world. It is someone who can preserve his or hers interiority and moral guidance. The ‘wise man’ is someone whose integrity serves as a guide and norm in a world where corruption and moral degradation prevail.

 

Satire IV on Digital Donne – 1633 edition

Satire I by John Donne

 

Satire 1 is the first in a series of five satires by John Donne. He wrote them in the 1590s, in his twenties, while  studying law at the Inns of Court and later seeking employment at the Court. The Satire I opens with the words:

Away thou fondling motley humorist,

Leave mee, and in this standing woodden chest,

Consorted with these few bookes, let me lye

In prison, and here be coffin’d, when I dye.

The satirist compares his study to the ‘standing wooden chest,’ the prison in which he would rather die and ‘be coffined’ than abandon it. There, he is able to confer with ‘grave divines; (…) Nature’s secretary, the Philosopher; [a]nd jolly statesmen.’ They teach him how to ‘tie [t]he sinews of a city’s mystic body’. The metaphor is obviously an exaggeration. If the satirist died and ‘be coffin’d’ in the study as he wishes, he would not be able to escape its confines and to explore the city and court, as he later does in the Satire. Moreover, if the study is a prison to the satirist, it raises the question about the reason of his imprisonment and the nature of the sentence. The line ‘let me lie / In prison, and here be coffin’d, when I die’ implies that the satirist is sentenced for life.

The prospects of escaping the walls of the coffin-like prison, are greatly reduced by the hint of unavoidability of the confinement. Significantly, the satirist states ‘when’, not ‘if’ ‘I die.’ It can only lead to the conclusion that the Inns of Court were not the desired destiny for the satirist, or in fact, Donne himself.

The poet creates juxtaposition between the tranquillity of the study and the busyness of the city, between the ‘constant company’ of the divines and muses and the uncertainty of the company of humourist and the people on the streets. The grave, sepulchre-like image of the study, the ambiguity of the prison metaphor, helps to create the dissonance between the inner world of the scholar-poet and the un-poetic, shallow outside world without which, paradoxically, the poet cannot create. In the ‘wooden chest’ the satirist enjoys the everlasting company of ‘Giddy fantastic poets of each land’ and ‘equitable relationship’ with the Muses. Nevertheless, the true inspiration for writing lies outside the door of the study.

The satirist’s ‘coarse attire’, required by the Inns of Court regulations forbidding the wearing of long hair and swords, distinguishes him from the ‘motley humorist’. It also resembles the clothing of the first man just after the Fall, at the intermittent state between the bliss of paradise and the banishment on sinful earth. The satirist is visibly concerned with the spiritual significance of man’s past and future.

But, after the long protestations, the satirist says: ‘I shut my chamber doore, and come, lets goe’. What happens next is for you to explore. You can do this by reading the whole satire below:

Satire I on Digital Donne – 1633 edition

Death, thou shall die

Holy Sonnet 6

Death bee not proude, though some hath called thee

Mighty and Dreadfull, for thou art not soe

For those whom thou thinck’st thou dost overthrowe

Dye not poore Death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.

From rest, and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flowe

And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,

Rest of their bones, and Soules deliuerie.

Thou art slaue to Fate, Chance, Kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poyson, warr, and sicknes dwell

And Poppie or Charmes, can make vs sleepe as well

And better then thy stroak, why swell’st thou then?

One short sleepe past, wee wake aeternallye

And Death shall bee noe more. Death, thou shalt dye.

 

Donne’s tirade against death is a reworking of the words of St Paul in 1 Cor.: ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’ (1 Cor. 15:26), and further: ‘So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ (1 Cor. 15:54-55). As St Paul in the letter, Donne personifies Death to address him directly. He distinguishes the fate that awaits Death from the fate of men, who for centuries imagined death as a ‘rest and sleep’. As Donne argues, men ‘die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me’, after the rest and sleep, ‘which but thy pictures be (…) one short sleep past, we wake eternally.’

In the first two quatrains, Donne confronts the public, centuries-old folklore and artistic imagery of Death, its personification in the written and visual arts, to the faith and religion based on the Scripture. The poet thus compares death to sleep and rest as in the language spoken about the deceased or in the funeral art of the period. The established dichotomy between human and mortal helps Donne to convey his religious message.

Donne’s personification of death helps him to confront it. It becomes a real opponent in an argument like an enemy in the battle and therefore it is vulnerable to the attack of a mortal like Donne himself. The speaker expresses his view, that the dead ‘Die not’ and what appears to be a death of a person is just ‘One short sleep.’ With the resurrection the last enemy will be defeated. The personified Death will cease to exist while the mankind will awake from the short sleep to the eternal life.  ‘Death shall bee noe more.’ It ‘shalt dye.’

No Man Is An Island

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that (…)

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

Donne, John (1959) Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. Together with Death’s Duel. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

These are probably the most famous words of Donne. Even people who have never  heard his name or never read his poetry or sermons are familiar with the saying: ‘no man is an island’, or ‘for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ Surprisingly, they do not come from one of the poems, though often they are presented as such. They can be found in a very religious and meditative work of Donne, in the Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. They were first published in 1624 and were the result of a time of grave illness that Donne suffered through. He decided to write this piece while being seriously ill and fearing death. As the title calls them they are the devotions upon the emergent occasions and several steps in the writer’s sickness. They follow the path from the beginning of illness, through the period of uncertainty whether the patient will survive, up to the point when Donne is released from the care of the doctors.

Every devotion is divided into three parts: meditation, expostulation and prayer. The famous lines come from the meditation 17, out of total 23. It reflects the Donne’s apprehensions and uncertainties about his future but also reveals his Christian and Humanist values in regard to the man’s life and its purpose. Donne believes that every person has a purpose in life, and is a part of greater project. Lives of other people influence mine as mine influences theirs. The suffering of my fellow creature is part of my suffering, ‘because I am involved in mankind,’ the bell tolls for me.

Poetry and Paternity

Yesterday I had a pleasure of listening to the lecture by Dr Tom MacFaul (Corpus Christi, Oxford) on poetry and paternity in Renaissance England. The topic of the lecture coincides with Tom’s new book which deals with the notion of paternity, either in physical or metaphorical sense, that can be found, among others, in the poetry of Shakespeare, Spenser, Jonson, and of course, Donne.

Apart from taking part in the lecture I had a pleasure of reading the book, which, especially in relation to Donne’s works, gives an insight to the mind of the poet. I, as well as Tom, find Donne more interested in creation, than procreation, living and exploring human sexuality without the necessary propagatory consequences. As the poet says this act ‘diminisheth the length of life a day’; so, shortening your life through an unavoidable sexual life is quite a sacrifice, never to mention to produce an offspring who takes even more from his creator. More of that can be found in chapter 6 of Tom’s book: John Donne’s rhetorical contraception.

 

Tom MacFaul’s book Poetry and Paternity in Renaissance England is published by CUP (2010).

Love’s War

It is, for me, one of the most beautiful love elegies. John Donne’s Elegy XX Love’s War: – simple beauty, any comments?:

 

Till I have peace with thee, war other men,
And when I have peace, can I leave thee then?
All other Wars are scrupulous; Only thou
0 fair free City, mayst thyself allow
To any one. In Flanders, who can tell
Whether the Master press. or men rebel?
Only we know, that which all Idiots say,
They bear most blows which come to part the fray.
France in her lunatic giddiness did hate
Ever our men, yea and our God of late;
Yet she relies upon our Angels well,
Which ne’re return; no more than they which fell.
Sick Ireland is with a strange war possessed
Like to an ague, now raging, now at rest,
Which time will cure, yet it must do her good
If she were purged, and her head –vein let blood.
And Midas’ joys our Spanish journeys give,
We touch all gold, but find no food to live.
And I should be in that hot parching clime,
To dust and ashes turned before my time.
To mew me in a ship, is to enthral
Me in a prison, that were like to fall;
Or in a cloister, save that there men dwell
In a calm heaven, here in a swaggering hell.
Long voyages are long consumptions,
And ships are carts for executions.
Yea they are deaths; is’t not all one to fly
Into another world, as ‘tis to die?
Here let me war; in these arms let me lie;
Here let me parley, batter, bleed, and die.
Thine arms imprison me, and mine arms thee,
Thy heart thy ransom is, take mine for me.
Other men war that they their rest may gain,
But we will rest that we may fight again,.
Those wars the ignorant, these th’ experienced love,
There wee are always under, here above.
There engines far off breed a just true fear,
Near thrusts, pikes, stabs, yea bullets hurt not here.
There lies are wrongs; here safe uprightly lie;
There men kill men, we’will make one by and by,
Thou nothing; I not halfe so much shall do
In these wars, as they may which from us two
Shall spring. Thousands wee see which travel not
To wars; but stay swords, arms, and shot
To make at home; And shall not I do then
More glorious service, staying to make men?

A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day

‘TIS the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
    The sun is spent, and now his flasks
    Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
            The world’s whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
    For I am every dead thing,
    In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
            For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.
All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
    I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
    Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
            Have we two wept, and so
Drown’d the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;
    Were I a man, that I were one
    I needs must know ; I should prefer,
            If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love ; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.
But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
    At this time to the Goat is run
    To fetch new lust, and give it you,
            Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.

---

Source: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/nocturnal.php
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed., London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 45-46.

In ‘A Nocturnal’ the juxtaposition of sexual pleasure with death, that Donne uses in many of his other poems, is transformed into the correlation of death and idealistic, neo-Platonic love. Here, Donne uses images of death, darkness and midnight to express the persona’s sorrows resulting in the loss of the beloved. To intensify the emotions of the speaker Donne adapts the imagery of matins which liturgy is concerned with the reconciliation of opposites and the intense experience of the oppositions, such as night and day, dark and light, death and life, and nothingness and being.

The speaker’s emotions correspond to the barren and lifeless earthly surroundings, where ‘life is shrunk, / Dead and interr’d’. Although the death of a beloved woman and the winter scenery are the source of the speaker’s sorrows, the persona states ‘For I am every dead thing (…) re-begot / Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not’. Death, therefore, is a marking point, a threshold, and, just as God created life itself from the void, the speaker can create everlasting life from the ‘nothings’ of individual deaths. The prospect of reunion with the beloved in the afterlife brings hope to the speaker of the poem. It reflects the idea of life as a cycle of dying which can be broken only by the final death, which is a passage into the eternal life. In ‘A Nocturnal’ Donne suggests that ‘I am by her death (…) / Of the first nothing the elixir grown’ and like the death of nature during winter, which precedes spring, the deaths of a man are part of the same, unending continuum.

Links

I have added a new page to the blog with useful links to the several interesting websites.The Society’s page contains online forum and information about the annual conference. Other websites host the digital archives of John Donne‘s works.